Clients Who Disappear and Colleagues Who Cannot Compete: Female Characters in the BBC’s Sherlock

Abstract

This chapter argues that the BBC’s Sherlock limits the development of professional female characters, suggesting an anxiety about such characters competing with the male detective. It examines how professional female clients who appear prominently in Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are presented as formidable characters who draw the detective’s praise, and contrasts this to the total absence or relative invisibility of female clients in Sherlock. Finally it explores how Sherlock introduces two female characters with careers related to crime detection and argues that, while the development of these characters is limited by the series in general and by Sherlock himself in particular, they nevertheless play important roles in the narrative and in the development of Sherlock’s character.